[KDE/Mac] Help with uninstall...

[Ian Wadham]

Hello Nunzio,

On 30/04/2012, at 10:05 AM, Nunzio Gambale wrote:
> I have been trying to get koffice and or kde installed on my mac with not much luck!

KOffice is now called Calligra, I believe.

> Ultimately I'm trying to migrate our office (20+ macs) away from ical/mail M$oft apps...esp since Lion.

I hesitate to suggest this, but have you considered using LibreOffice 3?  It used to be
called OpenOffice.org, but recently split from Oracle and is continuing (free) development
as LibreOffice.  I have had several years of good experiences with it on Linux and now
Mac Os X LIon, mainly with word processing, slide presentations and simple spreadsheets.

I have also found it inter-operates with MS Office and MS Office files quite well, which is
helpful when you need to communicate with MS Windows users.

LibreOffice is to be preferred, because it continues to develop and improve, whereas
OpenOffice.org is currently more or less static.

> So if you have a second, could you point me in the direction of some answers to the following questions?
> 
> 1. How to start the KDE environment (is it from X11?)

KDE is based on the Qt library from Trolltech, now a subsidiary of Nokia.  On Mac, the
relevant version is qt4-mac, which integrates with the native Mac desktop, so apps
based on Qt or KDE execute in normal Mac OS X windows.  Some other Linux/UNIX
apps require to run inside Apple's X11 (X windows) app, such as the Gimp and Inkscape
graphics composers/editors.

> 2. Can i start koffice, WITHOUT starting the whole KDE environment

KDE apps require the kdeinit4 and dbus processes to be running in the background.
Then they need the KDE libraries and a few runtime processes.  I get all of these by
installing kdelibs4 and kdegames4 from Macports.

Some KDE apps are tightly integrated with the KDE desktop, so require more components
and are difficult to get running on Mac.  I have given up on the suite KMail, Kontact, Akonadi,
etc, for this reason.  Other apps, such as KMyMoney4 can run on their own, provided kdeinit4
and dbus are running.  I do not know which group Calligra and its components (e.g. Krita)
fall into.

You can set up kdeinit4 to run automatically, using "System Preferences->Users & Groups->
Login Items" on your Mac.  The launchctl commands in http://community.kde.org/Mac do this
for dbus.  The first command does it for "root" system-wide.  The second does it for the logged
in user and does not require "sudo".  After running these commands once, dbus is always
started automatically when you boot the Mac.

All the best, Ian W.